


Musing on You

by Red_Temper



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Ice Skating, Artist Victor Nikiforov, Artists, M/M, Magical Realism, Meet-Cute, Muse Yuuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 13:47:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18470203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Temper/pseuds/Red_Temper
Summary: No-Heart is a condition. Some say curse. Victor knows better than that. No-Heart is a thief's game and an artist's work and there is no cure. Only fixes which don't last.But there's something different about this one and it may have him hooked for life.





	Musing on You

Victor’s fingers were numb. His last hit leaked out of him into a quick charcoal sketch of a woman’s face. He was already out. Vibrant love, like an endorphin rush, didn’t last very long.

The pressure from his fingers snapped the charcoal in half. He snatched his keys from where he’d flung them across the room, peeking out under half-finished, dripping watercolours, and vanished through the door.

The streets were lively; lights ran on strings from rooftop to rooftop, and music spilled out from backrooms and attic soirees. It was still early enough for most and for the rest it was _always_ early enough, the city most alive when the rest of world was quiet. He cut through the busy quarter, through the familiar paths that he traced when he was looking for something; tonight, it had to be sparkling and promising and a little broken. His hands itched for it. His talented hands – his hands that could, his fingers and knuckles and palms.

His compensation. His hands that could for his heart that couldn’t, a supposedly fair price for bearing his deficiency. His heart wasn’t broken, unreachable, unawakened, or lanced with ice. Victor had No-Heart at all.

No-Heart: to keep his love inside his skin, No-Heart: to regulate the rush of it through his body, and No-Heart: to stop it draining too quickly from his empty centre. It left nothing, until he had only what he woke up with in the morning and what he could steal from others.

And the love that ran out from his fingers loved nothing so much as its work. Hours washed away with paints down a drain; his studio turning from paper planes gathered round a bin to breathtaking mess; his latest exhibition pulsing along to the beat of someone else’s love; and Victor would find sleep by its second-hand warmth, before the ache of jealousy set in.

At the corner of a street the buttery waft from a patisserie, a young child's bubbling laughter through the door, had his fingers itching to know some nearly-there love; something colourful, with flowers and ink. Not the kind he was looking for that night.

Outside the theatre, there were couples made of metal and spikes, grace bleeding with every step, easy elegance, and a mechanical kind of affection. Not really love at all. Still, he hadn't worked with wire in a while. His fingers flexed, he walked away. Love didn't like pretenders and not-love didn't like thieves.

Waiting on the side of the road for the lights to change, at the top of some stairs leading to the fluorescent underground, Victor tasted bitterness in the air and focused his gaze resolutely ahead. Three business men came out of the bright underworld, halfway caught between their suits and their homes, hands patting their phones, wrists flicking watches into sight, and roving eyes lingering on the unchanged lights with longing. They weren't what he came out here for and he didn’t like the grey, poisonous waft guarding their hearts from his view.

One last person joined them at the lights. He spared them less than glance, just a flick out of his periphery, catching the twitch of a smile, the upward dip in the corner, the teasing hint of a dimple.

His breath almost caught and he blinked rapidly. Perhaps, if he blinked enough he wouldn’t turn back to glance a second time. Those movements so perfectly sewn onto that mouth had set the need fluttering low in his stomach. He closed his eyes.

The flashes of half pieced together formations; medium, mode; a splash of colour, its complimentary; danced in the dark that was left. His fingertips ached with intention.

Distracted by the whirl of productivity in his mind, he forgot the colour of the lights, the sounds of street, and stepped down onto the roadway. One step, two…and then a strong hand wrapped itself in the back of his jacket. It was warm, with short but scraping nails. He flinched at their bite. The world behind his eyes began to crumble. He was jerked back onto the path. His eyes snapped open.

His fingers wiggled – not enough to work with.

‘Careful.’

The hand untangled itself from his jacket, taking its insistent nails with it. Victor whirled to check the suits, standing like automatons, practically clicking with every movement. He would have heard _them_ move. That only left one other. He turned just enough to see the committed curve of that upwards tilting mouth, paired with a jaw line and cheekbones he had seen before, though not in the statue halls of the Louvre – was that enough. No, but it _was_ enough to know that if Victor looked his fill, he might be disappointed. If this muse was real, he had his own defect in too much beauty; if he was not, he had little excuse for not owning a nail file.

He unconsciously twisted the ring on his right hand – no, not enough. Not right, not quite.

‘Thanks.’

He couldn’t bring himself to look at the muse for longer than a skating glance. He caught the sweep dark hair; caught up in little curls at the ends, jammed down under a ridiculous beanie. Were those reindeers?

He looked away again, fightint a smile at how ridiculous and... _cute_ that was.

The lights changed. Victor didn’t keep track of the businessmen as he crossed and reached the other side. They had no love worth extracting. The muse was a presence in his periphery: all darkly mysterious, that interesting mouth, and sharp lines – impossible to ignore. There was something there, lurking out of reach – a love that did not give itself away easily. The need writhed, and Victor marshalled some tentative designs to quell the feeling that stalked through his chest cavity.

His thoughts scattered at the sudden intrusion of a ringing phone. The need clawed its way up his throat, impatient – _this_ muse was a fucking test.

He shifted and stamped, rolled his head back, and huffed loudly as it rang on and on, till eventually it died away unanswered. His head snapped over when it immediately began again, shrill and insistent; eyes splintered like cracking ice, ready to trade his next masterpiece for peaceful, companionable silence.

The muse, at least, stood unperturbed, a midpoint of loose-limbed grace where a sparkling sort of cheer and self-satisfaction met and got lost in each other, the phone glowing blue through his jeans. Victor wanted to smack him. Any good thievery, even by an exceptional thief, required a certain amount of concentration, and the muse was smirking like he knew it.

‘You gonna get that?’ He asked, a tad acerbically.

It was an effort to hold back even that edge. The muse tilted his head at him, and Victor marked his nose, his eyes – intelligent, provoking – without processing it. Nearly.

‘No.’

That mouth curled around that word, the fondness in its whispering start and an amused quality to its disdainful end. Victor felt it pooling in his veins, could taste it in the grooves of his teeth, and with it came the desire to put it down somewhere, to carve it into something. He was staring; he was aware of it, but he was so flush with the rush of comprehension that the little things like politeness were pushed to the side. It was a little awkward. The muse blushed at the inspection.

Victor grasped its name. Selfish love. His breath whistled through his teeth before he could stop it. A love that was harder to steal than any other. His talent had only ever demanded what could be freely taken without comment, without commitment. He stopped breathing altogether – a _test._

The muse's eyes turned away, the red that crawled up his neck not unattractive but certainly distracting. Then his eyes darted back. A wry, twisted grin claimed residency on his lips. They were alone, the crossing man they faced malevolent red again. Victor blinked himself out of his own head, hands defensively lost in his pockets. The muse exhaled through his nose in a laughing manner, a huff of air to applaud something not worth the commitment of actual laughter.

He extracted his hand from the depths of his clothes. They both reached for the button – now, that could be something!

Touch would mean access to the reserves inside, skin bridging to skin; selfish heart to all of Victor…He could go home early.

The muse would feel it, though. He would know.

He snatched his hand back.

He couldn’t do it. Not that way. It would be too dangerous and it would corrupt the feeling. Victor couldn’t live with using half-pure products. He couldn’t face a masterpiece made of love that he’d been caught stealing. It would his greatest failure.

The muse’s hand pressed in. The button inverted with a projected sense of finality.

He had until the lights changed again, perhaps a block after that if he was lucky. Else, he wouldn't have enough and he would have to go home and time how long it took before his bin was full of airplanes. Victor caught the muse looking at him.

'Sucks we missed the last one, right?” He tried.

He was met with silence. His overture fell between them, knocked flat by the force field of bewilderment that punched out of the muse at Victor’s attempt at conversation.

‘No?’

– _Jesus Christ save me._

‘Yes?’

He gave up.

The Muse’s confused expression had him looking almost human.

‘Cool.’

Victor dropped it between them, his pathetic stack of corpse-like words.

The light didn’t change and the silence stretched on. The streetlight nearby was sickly and the temperature was dropping. He shifted from foot to foot. He felt eyes on him and looked up, hoping to catch his muse’s gaze before it darted away.

He didn’t quite make it, but it wasn’t long before he caught those eyes wandering back.

‘I don’t bite, you know. Not unless you want me to,’ it was an offer, joke, and provocation all at once.

Victor’s scuffling feet skidded on the incredibly not-wet ground, and the soft-spoken tease laughed. A breath of love was trapped in the sound, he snatched it free and felt it crackle on his fingertips – More.

‘Do you want me to?’

– More. More. More. More. Victor’s nails cut into his palms, he could taste the muse in his mouth. The hit traced its way through his veins, and settled like a spit of hot oil in his chest. The need unstuck its claws and clambered back down his throat to settle just underneath it – _Fuck_ , that’s good.

‘What?’ He asked, intelligently.

‘Never mind.’

‘Do people normally ask you to bite them on street corners? Is that a thing?’

Victor was slightly appalled at the manners of some people, more so that he had been so obvious with their aborted convergence. The muse smiled. He had very straight teeth. The kind of big, straight teeth that seemed harmless until you were up close.

‘No, but I believe in consent and you look…well, maybe it’s just how you look at me.’

The smile that started this travesty of a con, and those terrifyingly nice teeth, and that hit of love; already, the taste of cinnamon was fading from his tongue.

‘Who called you before?’

The muse’s sleeve brushed Victor’s, day’s old love soaked into the fibres like sweat sneaking across to settle on his skin. The need clamoured to pinch at it.

‘Nobody important.’

– _I bet they’re so flattered._ Victor wished the hunt would end soon, one way or another. He was almost resigned to living through the night without more than just that one taste.

‘There are no cars, we could just J-walk.’

– _Fuck it_ , maybe he’d have better luck tomorrow. He made eye contact, and then dropped his gaze to trace the words that fell slowly from that upwards tilted mouth.

‘We could.’

Neither moved.

They’d drifted so close together during the oddest conversation Victor had ever had so that the cotton of his shirt was lit with ambient heat. He memorised that face, it would be the first thing he sketched tomorrow after a more successful job than this. He wouldn’t stop stealing till he could recreate its complexity – Too much. Not enough. _You can’t take this._

The muse lit up in green and Victor turned away.

The street ahead was clear.

A hand grabbed the back of his shirt. There were no cars this time. Insistent nails bit deep into cloth, leaving new marks over fading ones, and he was turned around. The muse held him still; never brushing skin like he knew the rules Victor lived by.

‘Not so fast. I have something I want to give you.’

The smirk that twitched dimples into sight said he did know, had known the whole time.

He had been played.

The muse leaned in, tauntingly close, and cinnamon tickled the back of Victor’s throat. His eyes blew wide and dark. The muse opened his mouth and carefully held himself a breath away from Victor’s own.

‘This is not an ideal method but I can’t kiss you, though I’d like to.’

Warm breath funnelled into his mouth and his chest grew tight with the choking love that filled it. The purity of it was unparalleled and it _burned_. The muse pulled back and Victor gasped and hacked a loud cough. Particles of love sprinkled out.

‘Don’t waste it!’

Victor fought to get his lungs to normalize after the influx. The love seeped into his blood, pounding through his centre, thrumming in echo to the one across from him. Only his was weaker and a lie. The muse’s eyes were blown too, and his features finally shifted together in a way that made sense. Victor didn’t need to note them; it was unlikely he would ever forget how this night had turned out.

‘What was that?’ He wheezed. The green light flickering across the muse’s face was a problem he’d deal with when he could remember why it seemed important.

‘A charitable donation.’

‘I can’t use this.’

‘Because you didn’t steal it?’

‘Yes!’

The muse was washed in blinking red. Victor could do a colour study of him. He could sculpt him out of marble, or twist him out of wire. He wasn’t sure he could do any of those things like this.

‘If you don’t want it, give it back.’

Victor hesitated. He stepped out the muse’s arms and leant onto the button, green flaring to life immediately and blinkering quickly across the two of them.

‘You didn’t think that if people could be born with No-Hearts, there could be people born with too much of one. That we wouldn’t be able to recognise our polarity when it’s near or that we wouldn’t _want_ it.’

The muse’s eyes moved to the street ahead, and the green light flickered away again. Victor wondered how many times they would watch it do that before they were done. The false centre inside him tugged unfamiliarly when the muse looked back to him. He rubbed his chest with a steady hand.

‘You would make a beautiful piece,’ He told the muse.

‘You could make it. I could help you.’

Victor shuffled off the pole. ‘You already have.’

‘You’ll need more,’ the muse was watching him closely, his arms knotted together across his chest.

‘I always do.’

Victor was starting to wonder if the test had been staying away from the muse, if it hadn’t been his skill but his ability to resist the obvious temptation that was being marked. Either way, he had failed.

‘Then come find me,’ the muse ordered, ‘now, you know who I am.’

He nodded wearily, and the muse smiled once more. Victor’s hands prickled with an itch to trace that mouth with his fingertips. He wanted to know if he had hands that could because he had No-Heart, where those lips something too? Too much heart equals perfect curvature? It sounded dumb. He turned on his heel and went across the road, in defiance of the red man glaring at him from the other side. He made it to the other side without a third encounter involving grabby hands and biting nails.

And then he stopped.

Whirling back around, Victor searched for a retreating figure. The man across from him was flashing and green, but it wasn’t the man he was looking for. The muse had left, and he’d taken his name with him.

– _I know your face, but that’s not enough._

He walked back to his studio, barely aware of the cold. He finished one, imperfect sketch of his muse and the pencil was still caught between his still fingers as he faded into sleep.

And then all the love had run out.

He’d found a tangle of promised love in a ribbon caught in a bush, and he’d taken it. But it didn’t work, he’d forgotten the delicacies of working with stolen love and the painting had warped on its frame. His hands shook and rattled; he didn’t dare pick up a pencil after he’d snapped the last four.

– _Come find me…don’t waste it…I don’t bite. Were you even real?_

 There was a knock at the studio door. It took ten minutes after it became frequent knocking for him to drag himself off the floor and open it.

The smiling face he’d drawn a thousand times rested smugly just outside the frame.

‘I’m looing for the artist in residence. I’ve been told he’s looking for a beautiful piece.’

Victor had never quite gotten the hang of capturing the startling nature of those big, white teeth. The sudden reminder had him reaching for a pencil, the love that ghosted out of his muse's pores crackling across his skin. Shaking apart on the floor no longer seemed as appealing when his muse stood within the same room, offering what so few people willingly gave away. One encounter with him had been a flirtation with destruction. More would be its ensurance.

– _‘You'll need more…Come find me.'_

‘If you want to be credited, I’ll need to know your name.’

His muse grinned, dark hair curled at his neck underneath a blue beanie etched with drifting snowflakes. His plush mouth moved with the words.

"Oh," he said, suddenly a little shy, "It's Yuuri. Yuuri Katsuki."

– _Oh_ , Victor thought in return and then, _Ah well,_ as the muse pushed past him into the studio, exclaiming over every colour dripped stain and sketch, _great artists have not been known to live long lives, anyway._


End file.
